News

Rogers Faces Yet Another Net Neutrality Complaint

Teresa Murphy has filed another complaint against Rogers over its Internet traffic management practices, claiming its alleged fix of problems with World of Warcraft have not worked.

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June 10, 2011 Comments are Disabled News

Access Copyright Claims Pay-Per-Use Licences Create Incentive to Infringe

Access Copyright has issued a response to the AUCC complaint over its decision to stop issuing pay-per-use or transactional licences. The complaint arises from requests from universities to license individual works so that they can be used with payment and without risk of copyright infringement. Access Copyright is refusing to issue such licences, offering only a more expensive blanket licence that requires universities to license use of the entire repertoire. The Access Copyright response bizarrely claims that pay-per-use licences actually create incentives to infringe and that blanket licences are more appropriate in the digital economy. Never mind that Access Copyright offers transactional licences to corporate customers. Never mind that millions of cultural products are licensed individually and that the Internet and new technologies make it easier to do so. 

According to Access Copyright, since copying is now easier, a blanket licence is needed to guard against any potential uncompensated use:

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June 10, 2011 30 comments News

Telus: “We Absolutely Agree with the OECD’s Findings”

Telus has come out strongly in support of the OECD report on the high data roaming costs Canadians face. The company notes that there was no data roaming competition in Canada until 2009 since Rogers was the only GSM provider. Telus says it plans to slash its roaming pricing by […]

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June 9, 2011 4 comments News

“A Gross Abuse of the Collective Administration of Copyright”

Howard Knopf reports that the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) has filed an application to amend the Access Copyright interim tariff requiring it grant transactional or pay-per-use licences upon request. As I reported last month, Access Copyright has been denying requests by universities for transactional licences in an effort to pressure universities to force them to licence all digital materials for a far higher price. This results in a remarkable situation where universities attempt to pay to use works and Access Copyright says it won’t take their money (though it does offer pay-per-use for corporate customers).

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June 9, 2011 29 comments News

Report Finds Canada Most Expensive Data Roaming Country in the OECD

Surprise cellphone roaming bills are a frequent occurrence in Canada as consumers are often shocked to find bills in the thousands of dollars for data roaming when they travel outside the country. A new OECD report  helps the explain the reason why – Canadians face the highest data roaming costs […]

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June 8, 2011 15 comments News